Rome Food Tours
Rome Food Tours › Jewish Ghetto Rome Food: 8 Dishes to TryUpdated 2026-09-13
The Ghetto

Jewish Ghetto Rome Food: 8 Dishes to Try

Hours, prices and access verified by the Rome Food Tours team — last checked 2026-09-13

A white plate of carciofo alla giudia: whole Roman artichokes pressed open and fried until the leaves turn bronze and crisp, on a wooden table

The short answer

Jewish Ghetto Rome food is Roman-Jewish cooking: carciofo alla giudia, a whole artichoke fried until the leaves crisp, then fried cod fillets, squash blossoms, a baked anchovy and endive pie and a ricotta and sour cherry tart. The quarter is a few streets in Rione Sant’Angelo, facing Tiber Island. Its kosher kitchens close for Shabbat, and the artichoke is a February-to-May dish.

Which food walks enter the Jewish Ghetto

The route matters more than the name. A walk can carry the quarter in its title and still sell you a shorter option that leaves it out: the two-hour option of the Campo de’ Fiori, Ghetto and Trastevere walk drops the Ghetto, the fried artichoke, the pasta and the wine. Check which option you are paying for before you book.

Rome food walks whose route enters the Jewish Ghetto
WalkLengthIn the GhettoDrinks in the fareFrom
Rome: Eat Like a Local Street Food Tour - Historic Center2 hours 30 minutesFried artichoke stopNot included$43
Rome Street Food Tour Eat Like a Local2 hours 30 minutesWalks throughNot included$52
Rome Street Food Tour with Local Guide2 hours 30 minutesGhetto and Portico of OctaviaWine and beer$55
Rome: Ultimate Street Food Tour in the Old Town3 hours 30 minutesRoman Ghetto legAlcoholic drinks, water$59
Rome: Trastevere Ultimate Food Tour3 hoursAlong the Portico d’OttaviaAlcoholic drinks, water$76
Rome Food & Wine Tour: 15 tastings in Trastevere & Jewish Ghetto2 hours to 3 hours 30 minutesGhetto and Portico of Octavia; not on the 2-hour optionWine$86
Rome Food Tour by Night in the Jewish Ghetto & Campo Marzio with Wine Tasting4 hoursStarts here, at the Turtle FountainWine, beer, soft drinks$105

See the Rome Food tours

Three of the meeting points you will need, Piazza di San Simeone, Piazza Farnese and Piazza Mattei, are set out on the planning page.

Eight Jewish Ghetto dishes to order

Roman-Jewish cooking is a family cuisine handed down over centuries: inexpensive, seasonal ingredients, prepared under the rules that make food kosher. The Ghetto was enclosed in 1555 and opened for good in 1870, and these are the dishes you will find on its menus.

1. Carciofo alla giudia

This is the dish the quarter is known for: a whole, spineless Roman artichoke, salted, peppered and fried fully immersed in boiling oil until the leaves crisp. If you see it on a menu, order it first. It is a February-to-May dish, best in March and April, so check the artichoke season against your dates before you build an evening around it.

2. Filetti di baccalà

Crisp fried cod fillets, and one of the four things Rome’s tourism office says people come to the quarter to eat. When the artichoke is out of season, this is the fried dish you order in its place.

3. Fiori di zucca fritti

Squash blossoms stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies, then fried in batter. If you do not eat fish, say so before you order: the anchovy is inside the flower, where you cannot see it.

4. Aliciotti con l’indivia

A baked pie of fresh anchovies and endive in alternating layers, seasoned with garlic and oil and left in the oven for about 40 minutes. Rome’s tourism office calls it an ancient delicacy. You can eat it warm or cold.

5. Crostata di ricotta e visciole

A shortcrust tart with a layer of sour cherry jam and a layer of sweetened ricotta under a pastry lattice. Rome’s tourism office sends you to the historic bakeries of the old Ghetto for the original, and names the Boccione pastry shop for it.

6. Coppiette di carne secca

Meat cut into strips and dried. That is the whole of it, and it sits on the city’s own list of Roman-Jewish dishes beside the artichoke.

7. Animelle con i ceci

Sweetbreads with chickpeas. Rome’s tourism office traces the dish to the Jewish tradition of the fifth quarter: the offal left once the four quarters of a carcass are sold. If you have eaten offal in Testaccio, you will recognise the idea.

8. Caponata di melanzane

Aubergine caponata, the vegetable dish on the same list. It is the plate to add when your table has ordered three fried things in a row.

Two more from that list are worth knowing by name: polpettone di patate e tonno, a potato and tuna loaf, and the braided bread baked for Shabbat.

Is the food in the Jewish Ghetto kosher?

Some of it, and you can tell which. The Jewish Community of Rome publishes its list of certified kosher restaurants and marks each one meat (carne) or dairy (latte), never both. Five of the addresses on it are on Via del Portico d’Ottavia and one is on Piazza Cenci.

Not every trattoria in the quarter is on that list. No walk listed here describes itself as kosher, and one routes through a norcineria, a pork butcher’s, before it reaches the quarter. If you keep kosher, eat from the Community’s list rather than on a general tasting walk.

Eat the Ghetto with the table already booked

An evening walk meets at the Turtle Fountain and takes you through the quarter first, with dinner and wine in the fare.

See the Rome Food toursCompare every Rome Food tour

When to eat in the Ghetto, and when it is shut

Three things decide your date.

  • The artichoke. It is on the plate from February to May. Outside those months you order the quarter’s other dishes.
  • Shabbat. Certified kosher kitchens that publish their hours serve lunch only on Friday and reopen on Saturday evening, at 18:00 or 20:00. Friday-night Shabbat dinner is a fixed menu with limited places, which you reserve and pay for ahead.
  • The museum and the synagogue. The Jewish Museum and the Great Synagogue are closed on Saturdays and on Jewish holidays. On Fridays the museum shuts at 14:00, or at 16:00 from April to September.

Rome’s own feast days and closures are on the food calendar.

✅ Useful tip. If the Ghetto is the reason you are booking a walk, pick a Sunday-to-Thursday date. For a Friday evening or a Saturday, ask the operator which stop replaces the kosher kitchen.

What you walk past between bites

The Portico d’Ottavia is the ruin you will eat beside. Augustus rebuilt it between 27 and 23 BC for his sister Octavia. Rome’s main fish market traded under its colonnades until the end of the 1800s, and from 1555 one corner of its gateway was a corner of the enclosure.

The Turtle Fountain on Piazza Mattei, built between 1581 and 1588, is where the evening walk meets. The Great Synagogue of 1904 has the Jewish Museum inside: admission is €12 and covers the synagogue visit. No food walk here includes it, and the evening walk’s listing excludes the Synagogue interior, so you visit on your own and not on a Saturday. The landmarks page covers what else the routes pass.

💡 Did you know? Beside the Portico a marble slab set the length above which a fish’s head, up to the first fins, had to be handed to the Conservatori of the Capitol.

With a guide, or on your own?

On your own works. The quarter is small and free to walk, and the eight dishes above are on menus in plain sight, so a list and a free evening are enough.

A guide changes two things. A walking food tour rome route strings the Ghetto together with Campo de’ Fiori and either Trastevere or Piazza Navona in one evening, and it tells you why the artichoke is fried here. The street-food walks are the cheap way in, and the cheapest of them leave you to buy your own drink. The routes that finish over the river are among the Trastevere evenings.

If you are still choosing a format, the decision guide sets a tasting walk against a street-food circuit and a class. To see how the Ghetto compares with Testaccio and Prati, read Rome’s food quarters, rione by rione.

Each walk named above is on the Rome Food Tours grid, and every one refunds in full up to 24 hours ahead.

Frequently asked questions

What food is the Jewish Ghetto in Rome known for?
Carciofo alla giudia first: a whole Roman artichoke fried until the leaves crisp. Rome's tourism office lists the rest of what people come for: fried cod fillets, the anchovy and endive pie and the ricotta and sour cherry tart from the quarter's historic bakeries.
Can you eat carciofo alla giudia all year?
No. It is a February-to-May dish, best in March and April, because it depends on the fresh Roman artichoke, whose harvest starts in January and can run into May. Outside those months you can still order the quarter's other dishes.
Are restaurants in the Jewish Ghetto open on Saturday?
Certified kosher kitchens keep Shabbat. Those that publish their hours serve lunch only on Friday and reopen on Saturday evening, at 18:00 or 20:00. Friday-night dinner is a fixed Shabbat menu that you book and pay for ahead.
Are Rome food tours in the Jewish Ghetto kosher?
No walk listed here describes itself as kosher. If you keep kosher, use the Jewish Community of Rome's list of certified restaurants, where each kitchen is marked meat or dairy. Five of them are on Via del Portico d'Ottavia.

Tours that take you into the Ghetto